AT&T boosts in-house virtualization competence with Vyatta acquisition

Giant US operator AT&T has continued its quest for self-reliance in the virtualization era with the acquisition of Vyatta Software from Brocade.

The two things AT&T seems to covet most within Vyatta are its SD-WAN and white box capabilities, with both being components SDN. It will also acquire the Vyatta network operating system, which includes some existing virtualized network functions and, it seems, some tools to help make new ones.

This acquisition is symptomatic of AT&T’s desire to take matters into its own hands as the virtualization era progresses. In a recent interview with Telecoms.com a senior software architect at Vodafone revealed his company’s frustration at the rate of progress from vendors in this area and in a symbolic move networking vendor Ericsson actually purchased some virtualization goodness from AT&T.

“Our network transformation effort lets us add new features quicker than ever before at a much lower cost,” said Andre Fuetsch, CTO and President of AT&T Labs. “Being able to design and build the tools we need to enable that transformation is a win for us and for our customers.”

One of the reasons Vyatta was available is that Brocade itself is in the process of being acquired by Broadcom, which is mainly interested in it enterprise storage connectivity capabilities. As a consequence Brocade has been selling off its IP networking bits and bobs, including Ruckus to Arris soon after the Broadcom deal was announced, and this is the latest disposal. You can read further analysis of this move on Light Reading here.